Posted on 12/16/2015 7:26:22 PM PST by Utilizer
GRUB password protection can be bypassed
According to Canonical'a latest Ubuntu Security Notice, it would appear that there's a zero-day security vulnerability in the GRUB2 (GNU GRand Unified Bootloader) packages, affecting all GNU/Linux distributions running 2.02 Beta.
The security flaw was discovered by developers Ismael Ripoll and Hector Marco in the upstream GRUB2 packages, which did not correctly handled the backspace key when the bootloader was configured to use password-protected authentication, thus allowing a local attacker to bypass GRUB's password protection.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.softpedia.com ...
Odd. I have network attached storage (go flex pro) on my network and I can use samba to open it and copy to/from it from dolphin. I’ve even mounted it on occasion under /mnt. I’ve used scp to copy files from my old mint laptop to the desktop. I’ve also used ssh to run remotely on it. I don’t claim to be an expert. ... Maybe just lucky?
With the Mint OS (an Ubuntu-derivative) using grub/grub2, you first have to identify the partition/drive using its UUID, then figure out how to state it in the fstab file.
With Mepis, all you have to to is identify the partition you want to automount (sda5, hda7, etc) in the menu.lst and it is always there, even if you resize the partition(s).
Plus when you designate a directory to share it is easily seen by other machines on the network. I still can not get Mint to share anything on the network, no matter what I do. At the most, it will ask for a username and password, but will never allow access to the folder/directory.
Still working on that, but I have no such problems with Mepis. I designate it as shared (Samba), and any other machine on the network has no problem seeing it and copying files from it.
Mepis wins, hands down.
Dolphin works quite well in Mepis for sharing, but it behaves differently in Mint and does not offer identical menus to allow filesharing compared to Mepis.
Mepis asks if I wish to share a folder/directory, then shares it on the network.
Mint does not offer the option, instead makes you look for the Share Folder tab in the Settings - System Settings submenu... then still will not share anything at all.
Tired of dealing with it, I am designating the Mint machine as a Practice Dummy, and switching back to Mepis for the majority of the work I do. Much less problems with it, and all the other machines see the shares with no problems.
USB thumb drive.
If governments were actually useful, they would quietly hunt down and kill virus authors. The craze would eventually die out.
In my experience, I have only ever needed a UUID in fstab to mount a local drive. I have never needed a UUID to mount a folder from its drive on a host machine. My fstab in that case is just:
192.168.x.x/folder_name /mount_point nfs defaults 0 0
Is one of the machines on your network a Windoze? If not, I don’t understand why you’re using Samba.
Your mention of Mepis revived old memories, having tried it years ago. I considered having another look. Imagine my surprise to find the files on their website have not been updated since January 2012. Mepis may be convenient for file sharing, but it could not be up to date for Internet security. Certainly the included browsers would be outdated.
I tried Mepis and some others before settling on Ubuntu and later Mint. Mepis was not too user friendly when it came to setting up and using printers. With the print drivers manually installed, Mepis went through the motions of printing, but nothing ever printed out. I am very persistent, but finally gave up. By comparison, Ubuntu Hardy Heron was literally plug and play - I plugged in a printer, Ubuntu automatically detected it and installed the correct driver. Best of all, it printed. I was sold on Ubuntu from that time on and still use it.
I’d go with “lucky”. A USB drive on the Mint machine here will mount with no problems, and that is how I exchange files from one machine to the other.
However if I want to share a directory (folder), that is something else entirely. I have an ntfs folder/partition that I want to use to share files between computers on a local network. Mint (Ubuntu) will not allow it. No matter what I do, the most I can get the machine to do is allow the folder to show up in the local network. It will not allow any viewing of files on another machine, let alone sharing them.
I don’t want to get started about attempting to modify the network settings in Mint, either. More annoying than attempting to deal with a PIAPS, and just as unmovable.
I moved and resized the ntfs and swap partitions on this machine previously. Mint promptly stopped recognizing them. I had to use a bootable disk to go online and figure out how to correct it.
First, I had to copy down the commandline instructions to find the UUID of the partitions. Then I had to modify the grub bootloader to re-see them. After several tries. And a few hours of work.
In Mepis, the ntfs partition was sda5, and the swap partition was sda6. No matter how many times I resized and moved the partitions, Mepis always booted up and recognized them no problem. Plus, I could easily modify the menu.lst file to disable booting from ‘doze, and re-enable it at any future time in case I had to work on a particular project that needed it if I had to as well as modify the boot wait time.
Yes, Mepis is three years old. How old is Win7? Win8? I just keep the Security repos for Debian updated and no problems.
As for updated browsers, Opera is not included in the Debian repos so I just go to Opera.com and download the latest .deb version to install later. Same with any other program I like.
As far as printers, I would go to the mfgr website and download the .deb drivers for whichever model I needed. I had problems with one newer Brother printer, but I could either save the file (usuall either a schematic or text file) to a format that the Gimp recognized and print it out that way, or I would logout and reboot in ‘doze and print it out that way.
For the few times I have needed to print anything that was all that was necessary. Plus there were other linux progs that would print the file(s) sometimes when the default print would not work.
Sometimes I look up an Ubuntu Canonical repo to download something I want to try that is not in the regular Debian repos, it all depends on what I am after at the time.
Plus, let’s not forget the Alien option as well.
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